4/14/12 Kansas tornadoes chase summary

I have been wanting to do this for the last few days but have been quite lazy so here it goes. I believe this day first caught my attention Weds morning when the NAM came out showing a potential tornado outbreak across the Plains on Saturday. I had somewhat of an obligation on Saturday but had the chase itch and needed to get out. Once the Day 2 High Risk came out during the early morning hours on Thursday, that pretty much made my decision on what I would be doing this weekend.



So my chase partners (Ryan and Jim) and myself started making plans to leave Friday evening and overnight in Des Moines, IA to put ourselves in better position. I haven't had the best luck on high risk days and don't really like them given they are are a jinx in the chaser community, lots of chasers and usually lots of storms.

We woke up Saturday morning jacked and nerves high knowing the potential of this day, did our analysis and headed west on I-80 and entered Nebraska during the mid morning hours. This was a first time for all of us chasing on a day with 45% tornado probs. We decided to head south out of York, NE and make our way into KS.



Our initial area we liked was Concordia/Salina and wish we stuck to that. By noon the dryline over western KS was already setting off elevated storms (this would go on to screw up the northern target in Nebraska and limit instability) and the SPC issued a PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation) tornado watch with these storms forecasted to become surface based later in the day and pose a risk of strong, long-track tornadoes.



We got antsy and went to have a look see at the first tornado warned storm of the day west of Belleville, KS. It turns out this storm didn't look that great and we made the bad mistake of taking an east option onto a gravel road east of the notch...gravel quickly turned to mud on the other side of a hill and we had a close call going down said hill but thankfully were okay and now had to get back up the hill which was mostly mud. It took us about 4 attempts to get back up and get south. If that road took anymore water we would have been mostly done for the day.

At this point new development off the dryline was occurring in southwest KS and this was the start of the show. We headed south out of Beloit, KS and made our way to Great Bend to gas up and had to make a decision between two supercells heading northeast at us.



We chose the southern sueprcell that would head for St. John, KS and had reports of producing tornadoes. We intercepted it west of town and it at the time looked HP and outflowish. It was either stay with this one or drop south to another supercell coming up. We headed south and waited for a supercell coming up to the Pratt/Cunningham area.



This storm looked and felt better (strong inflow) but wasn't heading into the updraft, more offset to the right. We saw several funnel clouds off the the southwest miles away. This storm was also crawling and started to develop a nice inflow tail into the area of interest...a weak, scuddy wall cloud formed but thats about as interesting as it got.



We ended up heading north for awhile keeping with it but it never got going any further and we decided to blast north to another supercell which was producing tornadoes left and write. We were waking up a lot of ground and figured we would catch it near Salina, KS.

radar image at 6:30pm (at this time we are near Sterling, KS)



We continued northward then east to I-135 and were glad to see the speed limit jump to 75mph as we booked it north to Salina and east on I-70. Right before we got to 70 we could several several funnel clouds to the east and knew this thing wasn't done. We continued on I-70 east with the meso just north and spinning nicely and we were quickly greeted to our first tornado, albeit brief.



And only a few minutes later we had another tornado quickly come down just north of I-70. This was perfect and by far my most rewarding tornado to date.





We then exited the highway and headed north as the tornado continued to get larger in size.



gorgeous rope tornado looking north



Solomon, KS tornado video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3SmiR7HxWY

Manchester, KS rope tornado

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYli4sDDMk

Overall it was a great chase day and very rewarding given we were on many storms driving long distances and they just weren't producing for us.

And my first Kansas tornadoes!!!

Upper air loops of the 1967 Chicago Blizzard

Skilling getting a lot of info for this storm to go on the Tribune weather page for tomorrow so thought I would put up some loops really quick.

Whats amazing is how slow it moves once you reach 12z on the 26th.


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Quick snowstorm update

Moderate to heavy snow continues across the area with the heaviest of it confined to along and south of I-88 down to the I-80 corridor around Morris/Joliet. Snow will continue for several more hours before beginning to taper off late this evening.



Have just over 4" down now and probably a few more to go so my 5-8" forecast from last night looks good.

We have another storm system for sunday night/monday but this one looks warmer and we should melt atleast some snow as we get into the mid 30's with some rain before changing over to snow monday morning.

Old Man Winter..."I'm back" in the words of MJ

Well it took long enough but winter is finally going to show its face tomorrow, better late than never. This isn't going to be as long as it could be cause I'm just too tired. Anyways, our first significant snowfall of the season is due tomorrow and tomorrow night....FINALLY! I've only had 2.1" thus far which is WAY WAY below average by this date in winter.

As usual, taking at the WV loop of whats going on.

http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/satellite/displaySat.php?region=EVV&itype=wv&size=large&endDate=20111020&endTime=-1&duration=12

The southern stream wave is located over the eastern US with sfc low currently located over the IN/OH border down to 996mb which will slowly drift north later tonight and move into MI. As this is happening our main player is the deepening/amplifying trof over the central plains that will continue to dive southeast into MO and continuing to intensify as it then heads east during the day through southern IL tomorrow and into IN/OH tomorrow night.

0z NAM with our strong upper level system by tomorrow evening




Associated with the feature is a strong cold front with very cold air behind it. The front right now is closing in on the ole miss river southward through MO with much stronger winds behind it as well as light snow and temps in the teens and 20's. Whats amazing is we have only had a few events where we are in the 50's one day and a big snow and 20's the next day.



Snow will continue to increase in coverage to our west just behind the front and shouldn't get here till around 9am or after.



Once it gets going though it wont stop till the early morning hours on friday, the long duration nature of this event is one of the things is going to help pile up the snow. The heaviest period of snow should be from around 12-7pm tomorrow.



Another thing that is going to help snowfall production as well as size of the dendrites is what we call the DGZ (dendritic growth zone) This is a zone roughly between -10 and -20 degrees C in the atmosphere and typically where your best snow growth is located. The deeper the layer is, the better snowfall production we have. Thanks to Victor Gensini for putting this image together off the WRF. As you can see the temperature is in the layer from around 600mb down to 900mb which is extremely impressive.



For totals I am still riding my 4-7" call area wide with possibly higher amounts near the lake due to lake enhancement. Rush hour tomorrow afternoon is going to be hell so drive carefully.


Matt

Big 0z Euro phased event next week

Between being bored and thinking it was a cool loop, I thought I would put up a quick animation of the 0z Euro run tonight showing the northern stream wave diving southeast and phasing with the cut off low in the southwest as it slowly tracks eastward across the southern plains.

Where have we seen this before? Geez. Anyways, the models have been throwing around this solution for a few days now with the Euro being most consistent with this happening or atleast trying to phasing somewhere over the central/eastern US.

GR level 2 radar loops of strong tornadoes-Joplin and Greensburg to start

With the current boring weather pattern I thought I would put together a few radar loops from different strong tornado events. I will start off with two monsters that happened in the last four years.

5/4/07-Greensburg EF-5

One of my favorite tornado events of all-time to go back and look at. Analyzing the entire synoptic and even more, mesoscale setup is amazing to me and how the hodograph dramatically near dark, left split after left split after left split then BOOM. The loop of the Greensburg supercell and its associated strong tornadoes is probably my favorite 4 hour loop of all-time. Whats amazing this the amount of occlusions and new mesocyclones that went on to produce more strong tornadoes, some at the same time. As you can see in this loop, the mesocyclone and Greensburg tornadoe starts to occlude just before hitting the town of Greensburg and begins to turn north and eventually northwest while the new meso really intensifies just east of town.


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5/22/11 Joplin MO EF-5 (Joplin marked by the red dot)

The environment suggested the possibility of strong tornadoes in southwest MO but what amazes me is how quickly it spun up and you can get a sense in some of the videos of it showing it going from a funnel to a full blown wedge in seconds. You can also see the insane debris ball as debris was lifted up into the tornado aloft and picked up by the radar.



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12z Euro run Ensemble Prediction System (EPS) aka The New Hotness

I'm bored so thought I'd throw together a quick loop of this run showing a major snowstorm during the first weekend of December. Yes it most likely will not verify and the system in model land is still two weeks away but I couldn't resist. But...this run which goes out to 360hr is very active with enough cold air to work with.

"Control run of the 51 member ECMWF Ensemble Predition System. This is not an ensemble mean"